‘The Brink’ Not Going Forward With Season 2 At HBO

HBO has reversed its July decision to renew freshman comedy The Brink starring Jack Black and Tim Robbins. The series will not be going to Season 2. “After evaluating our schedule and our programming needs, we unfortunately decided we cannot give The Brink the attention it deserves for a second season,” HBO said in a statement to Deadline. “We are proud of the first season and wish everyone involved in this show the very best.

On the comedy front, HBO has best series Emmy winner Veep and nominee Silicon Valley, Togetherness, Girls and The Brink‘s companion Ballers returning next year, to be joined by the upcoming Divorce, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and Issa Rae’s recently picked upInsecure.

The Brink had been very much on the bubble, with HBO going down to the wire on the renewal, which came a day before the options on the cast were set to expire after a weeklong extension. The pickup of the show came two weeks after the death of the series’ executive producer Jerry Weintraub at age 77.

The Brink, whose road to HBO’s schedule started with an email to Weintraub containing the script by former Weeds executive producer Roberto Benabib and his brother Kim Benabib, took only four months from that day until the project received a series greenlight in February 2014 — an unusually quick turnaround. “They don’t know how long I’m going to live, that’s why they picked it up so quickly,” Weintraub quipped at the time.

Written by the Benabibs, The Brink, which received OK not great reviews and ratings, was a dark comedy focusing on a geopolitical crisis and its effect on three disparate and desperate men: U.S. Secretary of State Walter Larson (Robbins); Alex Talbot (Black), a lowly Foreign Service officer; and Zeke Tilson (Pablo Schreiber), an ace Navy fighter pilot. The setting was expected to change for Season 2.